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Ancient Narrative Volume 2 The Satyrica of Petronius as a Roman Palimpsest GOTTSKÁLK JENSSON Reykjavík Roman literature is possibly the most palimpsestuous of literatures.1 So much so that lovers of Roman letters have had to fight off the unwanted comparison with Roman plastic arts where, as is well known, there are no originals. A series of famous names will emphasise the obvious: Plautus, Terence, Varro, Cicero, Lucretius, Catullus, Virgil, Livy, Horace, Ovid, Seneca, Statius and Apuleius. These (and many more) were borrowers, reworkers, rewriters. But we try not to hold it against them. When the stuff of Roman literature is Greek (and often, too, when it is Roman) the method of writing is translation, trans- formation, and imitation. By the same process that Roman literature grew out of Greek literature, much of Western literature grew out of Latin literature. In fact, ever since the Romantics, we have been extremely reluctant to admit to this influence, to any influence in fact, instead fantasizing about ‘originality’, or what one theorist sees as a longing for a freedom from paternal influence.2 Of course, demanding originality from Roman literature is to apply later esthetics to earlier art, but the anachronism doesn’t usually bother Petronian scholars. Few Roman writers have been more fantasized about in this manner than the elusive author of the Satyrica. We shall see in the central part of this paper that the modern ‘Petronius’ was invented in the late 19th century under ideological pressure. Although we rarely admit to this, we know nothing about ————— 1 I use the term ‘palimpsest’ as a broad term to denote a text derived from a previous text through transformation or imitation. It covers translation, copy, make-over, adaptation and many other such terms. For the purpose of this article the broad sense of the word is defined by Gérard Genette’s Palimpsests: Literature in the Second Degree. Translated by Channa Newman and Claude Doubinsky (Lincoln and London 1997; original French publication 1982). According to Genette (399) the adjective ‘palimpsestuous’ was coined by Philippe Lejeune. 2 For this Romantic and Post-Romantic psychology of literature, see Harold Bloom’s classic The Anxiety of Influence: A Theory of Poetry (New York, 1973). THE SATYRICA OF PETRONIUS AS A ROMAN PALIMPSEST 87 the author with certainty.3 If we ignore the usual guesswork, too uncertain in any case to provide a substantial foundation, we are left with no more than a name on the title page. And yet so much meaning has been invested in that name, so much affection has been bestowed since the 19th century upon this putatively ‘original’ Roman novelist, that the mere proposal that the Satyrica is a typical Roman palimpsest evokes a sense that a line of propriety has been crossed. Not surprisingly, the proposal has never been made before. One Scottish scholar,4 it is true, in an influential study on the ‘Roman Novel’, ridicules the Frenchman Collignon and the American Perry because they ‘regard the Satyricon as the adaptation of a lost romance perhaps called Priapeia.’ But he misrepresents the writings of these scholars. Albert Col- lignon, too, believed Petronius to be an original author and merely suggested that he might perhaps have used some plot ideas from a Greek model.5 Ben Edwin Perry was likewise a firm believer in Petronian originality and merely claimed that he used the same method as the author of the Greek Ass Story and wrote the central fable ‘on the basis of folklore plots’.6 The Oxford profes- sor Peter Parsons certainly did write the notorious words: ‘Natural reason long ago revealed that Petronius had a Greek model,’ but he didn’t mean a specific Greek work that Petronius had adapted, but a genre that Petronius had imi- tated.7 As much is revealed by his reference to ‘the Greek Schelmenroman’ and the fact that Parsons qualifies his statement with a footnote reference to a certain German publication from the early 20th century.8 If we make the effort to follow up on the reference, we find that Ulrich von Wilamowitz- Möllendorff in no weak terms affirms Petronian originality (Dem Dichter soll wahrlich seine Originalität nicht verkleinert werden), and merely speculates as to whether there existed a Greek roman comique or Schelmenroman, subse- quently granting with an evident grudge that ‘das picarische Element’ in Petronius is as Greek as the wrath of Priapus, the Widow of Ephesos and the ————— 3 Rose, 1971, persuaded many with his arguments for the identification of the author with C. Petronius, described as Nero’s elegantiarum arbiter by Tacitus (Ann. 16.18–19), but the identification is plausible at best and the case remains inconclusive. Smith 1975, xii– xiv, 213–214, has pointed out some of the weaknesses of this identification. 4 Walsh 1970, 17 5 Collignon 1892, 323. 6 Perry 1925, 39f. 7 Parsons 1971, 66. As to the notoriety of these words, cf. Stephens and Winkler 1995, 364–366. 8 The footnote runs like this: ‘e.g. Die Kultur der Gegenwart I viii, Die Gr. u. Lat. Litera- tur (3rd edn 1912) 190 (Willamowitz), 459 (Leo).’ 88 GOTTSKÁLK JENSSON shipwreck. At the end of this concession he adds the words: ‘... as is taught by the obvious and confirmed by analysis’ (lehrt der Augenschein und bestätigt die Analyse), which is clearly the phrase Parsons has anglicized by his ‘natural reason ... revealed’. We find nothing here or elsewhere regarding a specific Greek text that Petronius may have adapted. What is meant by a ‘Greek model’ in Petronian scholarship is always either a ‘serious’ Greek novel to be parodied, or some Greek genre which is designated by some such label as ‘comic’, ‘criminal’ or the anachronistic ‘picaresque’ (from the Spanish word picaro) and its German translation Schelmenroman. The possibility of a Greek text, the Σατυρικά, directly adopted by Petronius has never been entertained before, not even when scholars have attempted to list all the hypothetical possibilities.9 So, either it is simply a foolish idea, a philological absurdity, or it has become one of those things that you better not suggest, if you care for your respectability in the scholarly community: a disciplinary taboo. At the risk of making an ass of myself, I shall now try to show that, philo- logically, the suggestion is not unsound. What we are dealing with is a Roman narrative with a Greek title, Satyrica (Σατυρικά),10 told by a Greek called En- colpius (Εγκόλπιος)—hence the Greek accusative ‘Encolpion’ (Sat. 92,7; 104,1; 109,3; 114,9; 128,7)—from the Greek city of Massalia (Μασσαλία). In short a Greek story populated by Greek characters moving in a Greek envi- ronment. Given this general Greekness of the story, is it not possible that there existed a Greek novel by Encolpius of Massalia (almost certainly a pseudo- nym) relating the travels of an exiled anti-Odysseus? Can we rule out palimp- sest because the Greek text is never even mentioned in extant Greco-Roman ————— 9 Stephens and Winkler 1995, 364–365 n. 17, do just this when they ask in continuation of Parsons’ dictum: ‘what kind of Greek model? Greek novels of the historical or “idealis- tic” type, as well as salacious stories like Aristides’ Milesiaka certainly preexisted the Sa- tyrica, and Petronius, educated Roman that he was, would surely have read what existed. Did he adapt or satirize what had come to be a generic plot, did he have an individual se- rious novel in mind when he wrote the Satyrica, or was he writing a style of criminal- satiric fiction already well established in Greek?’ 10 The title of the earliest and best MS is Satiricon, or Satyricon. The fourth century writer Marius Victorinus also preserves Satyricon (GL 6, 153). The Latin spelling Satyricon (sc. libri) stands for the Greek genitive plural Σατυρικῶν which gives Σατυρικά in the nomi- native. Henriksson 1956, 77, concludes in his study of Greek book-titles in Roman litera- ture that the Roman readership of Petronius could probably not differentiate the meaning of the forms Satiricon and Satyricon, since there is no indication that such etymological understanding existed. In other words, satyrs and satire were related concepts. THE SATYRICA OF PETRONIUS AS A ROMAN PALIMPSEST 89 literature? Despite the lack of any remains of a Greek story, the problem of the Greekness of the Satyrica will not go away, because such a multitude of texts is completely lost and Roman literary history teaches us that Greek material in Roman literature originates from specific sources. As we shall see later in the article, at a certain point in the reception of the text it was indeed necessary to explain away the Greekness of the Satyrica before it could be read as a quin- tessential ‘national’ Roman novel of the realistic type. If one argues from the premise of ancient literary history alone, there is nothing improbable in the hypothesis that an ancient Roman writer composed a Latin fictional narrative by loosely rewriting a Greek text, yet retaining both the Greek title and the name of the Greek narrator, along with much of the rest of the story. We can say with certainty that there is nothing improbable in this hypothesis, because this is what Cornelius Sisenna did in the first century B.C., when he created his Milesiae or Milesiarum libri, a Latin version of the lost Greek Milesiaca (Μιλησιακά) by Aristides of Miletus;11 and because this is what Apuleius did, in the second century, when he produced the Metamor- phoses, a Latin version of the partly preserved Greek Metamorphoseis (Μεταµορφώσεις) of Lucius of Patras. There is no need to mention other Ro- man genres built on Greek works.
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